11 September 2011

Hands down my favorite Old West gunslinger, much due to Val Kilmer's fantastic characterization (and in my opinion his best role) in Tombstone. The scene where Doc insults Johnny Ringo with the empty cup makes me LOL every time.

This is also the last Western model from my small Reaper order. It was a nice little distraction from my terrain project and school work, and it added to my Old West collection quite nicely.

I painted him with a mix of clothes choices from the Tombstone movie, the red vest and brown tie with light pattern he has in one scene and the grayish duster from another combined. This because I wanted him to have some bright colors about him. The skin was painted to be a bit pasty, I mixed Tanned Flesh and Rotting Flesh and applied it in layers. There was also a wash of Baal Red to his face at one point to give him a sickly look.

What I love about the Legends of the Old West rules which I use for my Old West models is that the authors actually included a lot of famous characters, such as Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil Earp, the Masterson brothers, Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius so you could in fact replay scenes from movies like Tombstone with already written and ready to play characters. I will review the rules of LotoW as part of the western themed week.

"Tombstone" was was much more focused than "Wyatt Earp", and I find the events in "Tombstone" to be the most interesting aspects of the story about Wyatt Earp story. Kurt Russel was indeed a better and much more intense version of Earp as well in the Tombstone movie. "Wyatt Earp" did have an awesome cast and included a lot of interesting characters not seen in "Tombstone" though. But the two main heroes are just so much better portrayed by Russel and Kilmer.

I feel that "Tombstone" highlights the awesomeness, while "Wyatt Earp" tells the entire story. As such Wyatt Earp is worthwile to watch but simply not as captivating.

Tombstone I love for telling the myth. The actual history is much different from what is shown in the film. By a long shot. Wyatt and Ike Clanton actually had a lot of deals going together. The OK Corral was the result of one that went bad and Ike assumed Wyatt was going to be ruthless about it. Sherrif Behan gets up in Wyatt's grill because he knows Wyatt is gunning for his job, which Ike was going to help Wyatt get until things went bad. The real story is way more interesting but would not make good cinema.